Fallout 4 Preformance Issues + Hardware troubles?

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VinorSion

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So I got fallout 4 and a new GPU and an upgrade to my ram for Christmas. Before this upgrade I was rocking an old MSI HD4850 and 2x2GB sticks of generic ram. I upgraded to an R7 370 4GB from MSI and basic Corsair DDR3 1333Mhz RAM. I installed the ram and GPU and it all worked fine. Installed the latest crimson drivers. Then I Overclocked my GPU in small increments using Kombuster in between and it went all the way to 1150MHz on the core and 1500Mhz on the memory. Then I booted Fallout 4. Everything was running fine until I got to the bigger cities and sections of the game. Before the cities i was rocking full Ultra preset, without motion blur and lens flare and getting a steady and constant 45+FPS (After doing some INI tweaks and AMD control bar frame limiting). When I got to the bigger cities like Lexington, Around Cambridge Police Station, and diamond city, I got Frame drops down to 19-24 FPS, and back up to 45+ very sporadically. So i lowered my preset to high and no change in FPS dropped, other than i got about 50+ on the high end. Same pattern for medium and low. I went online and found some guides that helped me lower shadow render distance, shadow resolution, and turn off god rays. Still no help. I completely disabled Volumetric lighting and still no luck. Disabling Shadows completely and going to the ultra preset again got me back to the 45+ constantly range but the game looked like crud, with this giant black circle around me and was super immersion breaking. I have gotten texture optimization mods, dynamic shadow change mods, END memory boost mods to take advantage of the 4GB or VRAM I have, but no luck. I know the R7 370 is NOT a powerful card, but Linus had me convinced that Value to performance was key, so i made sure this was bought on cyber Monday and it turned out to be 150$. I don't have a very good CPU by any stretch on the imagination, only a measly 2nd gen i3-2120 @3.3Ghz. But it never got maxed out in any of the sections when the frames started dropping. Also, my GPU was never being used more that 54% at any time and dropped to 24% usage when the frame drops hit. What is going on? Any advice? Is my CPU bottle necking me? Should I return the R7 370 and go for a 280X? Save for a compatible i5 cpu?

Full PC Specs:
Windows 10 64-bit
500GB HDD
MSI Gaming R7 370@ 1150Mhz
i3-2120 @3.3
Optiplex390 Motherboard
2x4 Basic Corsair DDR3 RAm @ 1333Mhz
600W PSU (Non Modular)
 
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Well I as I said I had an Athlon originally with a GTX 650 then I switched to a r9 270 a year later and the CPU was slightly bottlenecking it, I didn't know about bottlenecks back then. I then did a complete rip out of the mobo a year after getting the r9 270 and stuck a socket 1150 mobo in for a i5 and put the r9 270 in and it did good but it got weird fps drops on big cities but when I got the GTX 970 it ran fine.

I have no idea why any of this happened.

EDIT: The i5 had issues in some areas of Fallout 4 and Witcher 3 and dipped to 45-50fps and I found it was due to the CPU being the bottleneck, it was near 100% across all cores.

I recently installed Intel Devil's Canyon Quad Core 8-Thread i7 4790K 4.0GHZ (boost 4.4GHZ) in my pc to...
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rcald2000

rcald2000

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Yes, your CPU is bottle-necking. You nailed it. Also, do you currently have 4 GB or 8 ? Fallout 4 has a minimum and recommended requirement of 8 GB. Watch this performance review. It supports what I'm claiming. I recommend that you upgrade to an i7 processor. On your 1155 socket (Sandy bridge) I believe that means a i7-4770k. Unfortunately, on Ebay, I see that particular CPU selling for $225 - $300. It would be nice to not have to upgrade the motherboard. But if you can't find the CPU for any cheaper, than a CPU platform upgrade may be indicated. i.e. skylake.

Fallout 4 PC Performance Review | 980 Ti, R9 380, 970 Tested
! jump straight to time index 4 minutes 0 seconds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5ojEukUj94
 
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VinorSion

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I have a LGA 1150 Socket. I do NOT have over 200 for a processor and i have done research to find the cheapest i5 4th gen that supports my socket is a Haswell i5-4460 for 180~ RN. Im in a situation where i could upgrade to a MSI 280X for only 70$. Would it still bottleneck to the same sort of performance i have now or would I get the greater power of the 280X, but still have a "proportional" bottleneck? Im not that educated on CPU's.
 
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cilliers

cilliers

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What you are experiencing with FO4 is a shared frustration for me. I'm using the fps, GPU load and temp OSD from MSI Afterburner. Using voltage and Mhz control in an efficient manner. OC'ing seems to make little to no difference for me. Despite the OCs having an impact on other real-world applications such as BF4, SC2, Diablo 3 and synthetics such as Kombustor.

I've upped my GTX 970 from 1200 Mhz to 1400 Mhz on core (boost) and from 3500 Mhz to 3800 (Boost) Mhz on Mem and still experiencing the same fps in FO4. In addition, I've tried upping my default 8GB DDR3 1600 Mhz RAM to 2000 Mhz - still no difference. Finally, I OC'ed my i7-3770K to 4.4 Ghz - no difference. I've experimented with these 3 variables in random configuration and yet still no difference (I've upped the voltages in agreement with the Mhz overclocks).

I think that it is just the way that we got stuck with inefficient programming from Bethesda, once again. I remember Fallout 3 giving me similar problems on the GTX 260, which was the recommended card for that game back then. I would like to know what the guys with the GTX 780's and GTX 980's are experiencing.

Edit:

My CPU hovers at 37% and the large fps drops typically appear at Corvega Assembly plant, up high as shown in the video by @rcald2000. In that video, I see that his GTX 980 SLi setup, drops from 122 fps to 68, so I'm not feeling to bad for my single GTX 970 slumping down to 44 fps from 60 fps.
 
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rcald2000

rcald2000

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Interesting. When I googled i3-2120, it brought me to the Intel ark page that stated Sandy Bridge and LGA 1155 socket (http://ark.intel.com/products/53426/Intel-Core-i3-2120-Processor-3M-Cache-3_30-GHz). It's possible I misread it. Regardless, please watch the performance review that I listed. No, I don't think upgrading from a 270 to a 280x will yield you any significant performance boost. At a minimum, you should upgrade to an i5 processor and 8 GB of RAM. Watch the performance review and let me know what you think.
 
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VinorSion

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From what i have seen either someone will get perft 60+ FPS on their cards preset auto detect thing, or they will get ass framedrops. I have no fucking clue how you are getting these kind of drops on a 970- the recommended card- and an i7 Oc'ed. WTF.

 
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VinorSion

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I watched the video and he said nothing exept that the i5 was also bottlenecking. I have 8Gigs of Ram. sorry if i didnt mention that. it wasa 2x4GB set.

 
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VinorSion

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I have seen some people (skilled modders) that think they can use the creation kit to fix some of these problems. Hopefully right....
 
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VinorSion

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Acctaully let me correct myself and say yet it is a LGA 1155 socket. somehow i thought it was 1150. second, i used MSI and it told me my CPU's were at 85%+ 100% of the time, even though task manager said it was at 65%. So i guess it is my CPU.

 
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Wayfall

Wayfall

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Hi

I would just like to add to you post I have never been able to play Fallout 3 properly till about 4 months ago when I upgraded drastically from an Athlon II x4 750k with a GTX 650 to an i5 4460 and a MSI GTX 970. Fallout 3 was very demanding even though it was so freaking old.
 
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VinorSion

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I was able to run fallout 3 on less than that idk what you were doing.
 
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Wayfall

Wayfall

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Well I as I said I had an Athlon originally with a GTX 650 then I switched to a r9 270 a year later and the CPU was slightly bottlenecking it, I didn't know about bottlenecks back then. I then did a complete rip out of the mobo a year after getting the r9 270 and stuck a socket 1150 mobo in for a i5 and put the r9 270 in and it did good but it got weird fps drops on big cities but when I got the GTX 970 it ran fine.

I have no idea why any of this happened.

EDIT: The i5 had issues in some areas of Fallout 4 and Witcher 3 and dipped to 45-50fps and I found it was due to the CPU being the bottleneck, it was near 100% across all cores.

I recently installed Intel Devil's Canyon Quad Core 8-Thread i7 4790K 4.0GHZ (boost 4.4GHZ) in my pc to replace the i5 and it get 40-50% usage across its physical cores then it's 4 virtual cores. All cores were not breaking a sweat with no drop in any of my big games.

Guess you really do need an i7 to play the big games...
 
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